Disappoint Me: A Novel

An electrifying story of love, betrayal, and the complicated allure of bougie domesticity from award-nominated author Nicola Dinan

I don’t know why I feel like I’ve been caught doing something dirty. Cheating on queerness. Fell down the stairs and woke up a trad wife.

Thirty years old with a lifetime of dysphoria and fuccbois rattling around in her head, Max is plagued by a deep dissatisfaction. Shouldn't these be the best years of her life? Why doesn't it feel that way? After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity.

Max thinks she’s found the answer in Vincent. While his corporate colleagues, trad friends, and Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman, he cares for Max in a way she’d always dismissed as a foolish fantasy. But he is also carrying baggage of his own. When the fall-out of a decades-old entanglement resurfaces, Max must decide what forgiveness really means. Can we be more than our worst mistakes? Is it possible to make peace with the past?

Funny, sharp, and poignant, Disappoint Me is a sweeping exploration of love, loss, trans panic, race, millennial angst, and the relationships--familial and romantic--that make us who we are.